Preface

Bananas are one of the top ten world food crops. This book, "Banana Nutrition – Function and Processing Kinetics", covers nutritional topics on the banana plant and fruit. It includes the following important chapters: (i) Introductory chapter on banana nutrition – function and processing kinetics; (ii) Pharmacological activities of banana; (iii) Banana bioactives: absorption, utilization, and health benefits; (iv) Banana pseudo-stem fiber: preparation, characteristics, and applications; (v) Banana drying kinetics; and (vi) Integrating text mining and network analysis for topic detection from published articles on banana sensory characteristics.

The introductory chapter focuses on the transgenicity of banana. Cultivation is affected by various diseases with the most serious being the Bunchy top disease caused by the Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV) and Fusarium wilt caused by the virulent fungus, *Fusarium oxysporum* f. sp. *cubense* tropical race 4 (TR4). Advances such as gene-editing have helped create plants that produce higher yields to meet the growing demand along with higher nutritional content. The purposes of the transgenic banana include enhanced fruit and value-added traits, pharmaceutical/ medicinal purpose, improved productivity, health, and nutrition. Some target traits in the transgenic banana include drought tolerance, disease resistance, stress and insect resistance, vitamin A content, color change, and vaccine production. The chapter highlights current research areas and findings on banana improvement using tissue culture and transgenic technology.

The chapter on "Pharmacological activities of banana" deals with the significance of the banana in traditional medicine and the pharmaceutical industries. Different chemical constituents such as apigenin glycosides, myricetin-3-O-rutinoside, kaempferol-3-O-rutinoside, dopamine, and serotonin have been reported in different parts and varieties of banana. The presence of carbohydrates, proteins, and flavonoids make bananas useful in both nutrition and therapeutics. The chapter discusses the essential information about the banana, including its varieties, distribution, pharmacological actions, and its relevance in the pharmaceutical industry. The information will be beneficial for researchers to further harness the robustness of this fruit in controlling many diseases and modification of drugs.

The chapter on "Banana bioactives: absorption, utilization, and health benefits" shows that the fruit is rich in carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins and is of great economic value. To increase the postharvest shelf-life of banana fruit, an appropriate postharvest handling procedure needs to be adopted to maintain the freshness of the produce. During the peak banana season, the fruit can be converted into intermediate products such as puree, concentrate, and ready-to-use forms such as chips and juices. Conversion into value-added products can reduce the huge amount of postharvest losses. Various processing methods converting this fruit into valueadded products are highlighted.

The chapter on "Banana pseudo-stem fiber: Preparation, characteristics, and applications" highlights that almost all the parts of this plant, i.e. fruit, leaves, flower bud, trunk, and pseudo-stem can be utilized. It discusses the production of banana pseudo-stem fiber, which includes plantation and harvesting; extraction of banana pseudo-stem fiber; retting; and degumming of the fiber. Several potential applications of this fiber are also mentioned, such as to fabricate rope, place mats, paper, cardboard, string thread, tea bags, high quality textile materials, absorbent, and polymer/fiber composites.

The chapter on "Banana drying kinetics" deals with the highly perishable fruit, requiring preservation in some form. Useful processes (natural and artificial) in the preservation of banana fruits are the focus of this chapter. Minimal processing, refrigeration, and dehydration or drying processes are the highlight of this chapter, including the different advantages and shortcomings. The chapter covers drying kinetics of banana, including prediction of drying behavior, and optimization of drying parameters. The chapter assesses the models of drying kinetics in predicting the drying behavior and in optimizing the drying parameters of banana fruits.

The final chapter is on "Integrating text mining and network analysis for topic detection from published articles on banana sensory characteristics". The chapter reviews published articles (28) from the PubMed database on banana sensory characteristics from 2002 to 2018, showing that the frequency of publication increased significantly from 3.6% in 2002 to 17.9% in 2011, decreased in 2012 and 2013, but has shown a steady increase from 2014. Data were mined to detect the topic of discussion using the KNIME software. The texts were tagged with the OSCAR chemical named entity and preprocessed by filtering and stemming, thereafter the topic of discussion detected with the Latent Dirichlet Allocation and term co-occurrence determined using KNIME data mining software. The co-occurrence terms were converted to node adjacency matrix and imported into Gephi Graph Visualisation and Manipulation software version 0.02. Network statistics such as modularity class, degree centrality, betweenness and closeness centrality were estimated. The majority of the OSCAR tagged words (50.8%) were chemical compounds, 47.3% were ontology terms, 1.2% were reaction names, and 0.7% were chemical adjectives. The directed network consisted of 53 nodes and 904 edges. There were four modularity classes; the base class and class 1 each consisted of 20.7%, class 2, 41.5%, and class 3, 17.0% of the nodes. The terms with high betweenness centrality (>45) were: accept (139), fruit (92), analysis (73) [class 0], coat (125), food (60), composite (47) [class 1] and banana (192) [class 3]. Three topics each consisting of five words were detected from the documents. This chapter provides details of each topic.

The various chapters contain recent advances in banana biotechnology that will appeal to farmers, plant breeders, food industry, food science programs, investors, and consumers. The information will be beneficial for researchers to further harness this crop in controlling many diseases and especially non-communicable nutrition-related human illnesses. It therefore contains substantial scientific information written in a form that is easy to understand. I appreciate the contributors of the chapters as well as the sources of funding for each chapter.

> **Afam I.O. Jideani and Tonna A. Anyasi**  Department of Food Science and Technology, School of Agriculture, University of Venda, Thohoyandou, Limpopo Province, South Africa

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**Chapter 1**

*Afam I.O. Jideani*

**1. Introduction**

Introductory Chapter:

and Processing Kinetics

textile materials, absorbent and polymer/fibre composites.

Banana Nutrition - Function

Bananas (*Musa* spp.) are typical climacteric fruit with rich nutrient contents which are considered as a healthy fruit. They are one of the top 10 world food crops contributing to cash and food crop in the tropics and subtropics. Bananas are important in nutrition, therapeutics, traditional medicine and the pharmaceutical and food industries. The different chemical constituents like apigenin glycosides, myricetin-3-O-rutinoside, kaempferol-3-O-rutinoside, dopamine and serotonin have been reported in different parts and varieties of banana [1]. Pharmacological actions of bananas have been seen such as antiulcer, antimicrobial and antioxidant activities. Almost all the parts of this plant, i.e. fruit, leaves, flower bud, trunk, pseudo-stem can be utilized. The book highlights the extraction of banana pseudo-stem fibre and retting; as well as degumming of the fibre with the characteristics and potential application of banana pseudo-stem fibre, including morphological, physical, mechanical, durability, degradability, thermal, chemical, and anti-bacterial properties. Several potential applications of this fibre highlighted are the use of this fibre to fabricate rope, place mats, paper cardboard, string thread, tea bag, high quality

Pre- and postharvest technologies invariably affect the carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins and other composition like the bioactives of plant foods. To increase the postharvest shelf life and quality of banana fruit, appropriate postharvest handling procedure ensures the freshness of the produce considering effects of climate change on crops. The conversion into intermediate and other products ensures the versatility in value addition. Also, conversion into value added products can reduce huge amount of postharvest losses. The aspects of transgenic technology in banana complement the advances in banana biotechnology, giving rise to product development strategies. As highly perishable fruit, bananas require robust preservation processes (natural and artificial) including minimal processing, refrigeration and dehydration (both thermal and nonthermal drying processes). The models of drying kinetics in predicting the drying behaviour and in optimising the drying parameters of banana fruits are all important food engineering applications. Also, integrating digitalisation systems into banana value chain/processing will benefit the banana industry as Siemens recently created consistent automation with its digital enterprise. In addition, integrating text mining and network analysis of published articles on banana sensory characteristics reveal factors such as chemical additives, ontology and other intrinsic attributes needed by food processors in meeting the expectation of consumers. The food industries are poised to improve customers' health and expectation on nutritious food products. The advocacy by

## **Chapter 1**
